Question about copyrighting and stuff like that...

[mormegil]

I found this helpful from the U.S. Copyright site that Saucie provided, I know it's late but you know the saying...

How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians

This doesn't cover fan fiction but obviously discussing the books and using quotes, even rather lengthy quotes (Boro, I'm looking at you ) is in no way a violation of copyright. Accordingly I interpret this to also mean fan fiction is not a violation of copyright inasmuch as we give credit to Tolkien for the source which this site has adequately and satisfactorily given.